Adorno and the Global Public Sphere: Rethinking Globalization and the Cosmopolitan Condition of Politics

Abstract

In contemporary sociology and political theory, the “global public sphere” mostly refers to an emerging horizontal globalization of public spaces, political agents, and normative discourses evolving toward a “global civil society” (Kaldor 2003). Engendered by new information technology and global media, the “global public sphere” is assumed to constitute a democratic corrective facing international institutions and global politics, while promoting critical universality and universalistic norms and rights claims. In its nascent stage, it already serves, it is argued, critical functions of publicity and critique in a “partially globalized world” (Keohane 2001). Even though it is still considered weak when compared to national democratic publics, several cosmopolitan theorists also attribute to the multifaceted “global public sphere” a key role legitimizing the “constitutionalization of international law” (Habermas 2006; Archibugi 2008; Marchetti 2012). Others emphasize the potential progressive impact of the global public on “domestic” politics, enabling and supporting cosmopolitan norms and democratic agents in local conflicts within nation-states.KeywordsCivil SocietyPublic SphereCivil Society OrganizationInstrumental RationalityCulture IndustryThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.